Leaning Republican

A good friend of mine recently described me as a libertarian that leans Republican.  After reflection, I concluded that I am a libertarian that leans away from Democrat, so I suppose he is right – it is all a matter of perspective. 

The difference between the modern day Democrat Party and the modern day Republican Party is that Republicans are un-libertarian, while Democrats are anti-libertarian.  On many issues, the trajectory of GOP and Libertarian positions are the same but Republican endpoints fall far short of our Libertarian counterparts.  On most issues, however, Democrat positions are diametrically opposed to the Libertarian view.  Distance is more easily overcome than direction. 

And the more extreme the GOP position, the closer it tends to be to the Libertarian view, while the more extreme Democrat positions widen the gap between us.  It should not surprise anyone that libertarians will tend to vote Republican more often than Democrat in a tight lesser-of-two-evils contest or when we have no candidate of our own on the ballot. 

Nor should it surprise anyone that libertarians often run as Republicans while rarely running as Democrats.  There is a strong libertarian strain in the Republican Party – the Goldwater legacy – that produces national candidates like Ron Paul, or state candidates like the late Ed Thompson who are clearly not mainstream GOP, but bring enthusiasm and activism and bona fide small government ideas to bear on campaigns and governance.

I know of no such libertarian wing in the Democrat party.  Even in areas where we should find some common ground – personal liberty, equal rights, de-militarization of foreign policy – the Democrats’ fondness for government-imposed social order and collective duty present a divide too big to cross.   

The Libertarian Party platform contains 26 planks that outline libertarian positions on personal liberty, economic liberty, and security.  A tab on my blog contains the list for anyone who wants to see what we libertarians are all about on the major issues.   

In the statement of principles that precede these numbered platform planks, we state clearly the ideas that form policy positions that have remained consistent over all the years I have been associated with the libertarian movement.   Our view of the fundamental role of government is so different from that of liberal/progressive Democrats that it is difficult for me to imagine a single Democrat friend of mine agreeing with this LP statement of principle:     

“Since governments, when instituted, must not violate individual rights, we oppose all interference by government in the areas of voluntary and contractual relations among individuals. People should not be forced to sacrifice their lives and property for the benefit of others. They should be left free by government to deal with one another as free traders; and the resultant economic system, the only one compatible with the protection of individual rights, is the free market.”

Conversely, I would hazard a guess that most Republicans would agree with the statement, as far as it goes.  That is, until I mention drugs, gays, China, or the Patriot Act - in which cases liberty gets flung out the window in wholesale lots to chase the illusion of security or moral order. 

Next week is Wisconsin’s Presidential Primary.  One of four remaining GOP candidates will likely be sworn into office in January of 2013 and his first order of business will be the FY2014 budget.  There are three GOP candidates that will spend more than President Obama programmed for FY2013 and one that will cut spending by $1 trillion. 

There are three GOP candidates who have committed to military action against Iran and propose extension of our commitments in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and who knows where else by the time this year is over, and one who will defend this country first and only.  There are three GOP candidates who will try to engage in government-to-government negotiations of trade terms between the two largest economies in the world, and one that will let traders trade and markets function. 

There are three candidates who will lobby the Federal Reserve to modify its monetary policy slightly at the edges and one who will end the Fed.  Three will dictate a new agenda to the Department of Education and one will abolish it.  Three will tinker with the tax code and one will shut down the IRS.  Three will change government energy policy and one will eliminate the Department of Energy – along with dozens of other departments, agencies, and grey-area entities whose main purpose is to thwart the Constitution and prevent people from living free.

Do I lean Republican?  Well, I definitely lean towards ONE Republican.  Santorum wants a government more churchy, Romney more efficient, Gingrich more profoundly transformational or less fundamentally absurd...or something.   Ron Paul doesn’t want a churchy, efficient, profound government – he wants one that is Constitutionally limited.  So do we.

That Constitution is the tie that binds libertarians and conservatives together on so many issues and erects insurmountable barriers between libertarians and liberals on nearly everything.  The conventional wisdom is that winning independents in the general election requires running to the middle, compromising on principle, and erasing your primary positions like an Etch-a-Sketch. 

I don’t think so; I think winning independents requires standing on Constitutional principles and betting the ranch on liberty.  The beautiful thing about freedom is that we can all want it for different reasons and we all get what we want.  One guy has been resolute in his defense of freedom and Constitutional government for longer than I have been paying attention. 

Ron Paul.  Please vote for him on Tuesday.     


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!
 

Do Your Job

It is fitting that President Obama’s term of office will both start and end with health care.  With control of both houses of Congress, the President had the opportunity in 2009 to impose national health care on an unwilling nation and he took it. 

He bet his second term that once people understood the benefits of his signature piece of legislation – Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) - they would love him for it.  That’s why they call it a bet.

In the last year of his term, PPACA has done exactly the opposite of everything he promised us it would do.  It has increased health care costs, caused providers to leave practice, increased premiums by 3-4 times the rate of inflation, changed every employer’s plan, and increased the number of uninsured – the root problem it promised to solve - to over 17% of the population. 

We were told it would cost $800 billion; it turns out to be $1.7 trillion and climbing every time CBO takes another look at it.  Is there anyone who did not see that one coming?  The flaws – to put it nicely - in the administration’s representations to CBO were obvious to any freshman econ major or any working mother who pays bills after Christmas - you can’t give more things to more people and spend less.  

Many of us spoke out against government-run health care; numerous market-driven alternatives were offered to address the problems of access, cost, and quality of care.  Objections were raised to both the content of PPACA and the process by which it was passed.  When I cautioned in 2010 that employers would elect to drop coverage as their default setting, many called that idea outrageous; now that polls show anywhere between 30 to 50% of employers expect to drop, that opinion is not so extreme.  

Objections to PPACA ranged from pragmatic concerns about the Bill’s incentives to a host of questions about the practicality of implementation details to the overriding concern of libertarians and conservatives that the Bill seemed to be clearly unconstitutional.  Nancy Pelosi famously responded to the practical concerns with, “we must pass the bill to find out what is in the bill”, and to the constitutional question, “are you serious?” 

Well, we know quite a bit more about the Bill now, and this week the U.S. Supreme Court got very serious, hearing oral arguments for and against its Constitutionality.  One of the gauges of how far we have strayed from the path of the Founders’ Intent is the near certainty that this will be another in a long series of split decisions from the Supreme Court.  One person could decide the trajectory of a nation.

The Constitution is not a terribly difficult or mysterious document to read and comprehend; most 9th graders with a reasonable understanding of American History can digest it.  It is a mystery how nine very smart people can disagree over whether or not a particular law or executive action is authorized by it, which is the job – the essential job – of the Supreme Court.

It’s actually not such a mystery.  You have some justices who compare a law or action against what the Constitution says, and you have others who compare it to what they wish it would have said.  That’s how you get 5-4 on everything.  

The framers had a simple and brilliant idea to divide government and balance its powers between three separate branches with three different missions: Congress represents the people and decides what laws we need to be enacted, while the President enforces those laws and the Supreme Court rules on whether or not the actions of Congress and the President are Constitutionally authorized. 

Think of how many important recent decisions of the Supreme Court have come down with those head-scratching 5-4 decisions; it is frightening to think that the entire legal framework of our nation is at the mercy of who happens to be the President when one of the Supremes dies or retires for health reasons. 

To those of us who took mandatory civics class in high school, the current state of our government is twisted almost beyond recognition.  Congress has not passed a budget – their job - in over 1,000 days; the President makes law daily – not his job – through executive orders; and the Supreme Court is listening to arguments about the wisdom of nationalized health care – not their job – instead of limiting their scope of inquiry to the question of Constitutional authorization – their job. 

The President’s argument for authority is an interpretation of the commerce clause that is truly stunning in scope.  It expands the definition of interstate commerce from every thing that is done (itself mind-boggling) to everything that is done and plus everything not done (mind numbing).  He argues that the state holds inherent power over the people to compel action of its choosing.  

While most discussion of Constitutionality has focused on the individual mandate, the other key issues of mandated coverage and allocation of price to cost are just as troubling.  The idea that the state can dictate price, content, and cost of a product or service to a private concern is pure anti-capitalism, and the impact of the precedent that will be set if this thing goes 5-4 the wrong way is hard to even comprehend. 

I will leave it to Constitutional scholars to handicap the decision that the Supremes will make concerning the President’s PPACA legislation, pointing out only that their decision will define his legacy and decide the future course of our nation in this century.  The Constitution will either be upheld or it will be discarded permanently.

Those who advocate a post-Constitutional, post-Capitalist America should get very serious about figuring out how they will run such a beast, because the capitalists and patriots will not help them.  It’s not that we will pout about losing a political battle; it is that we have no idea how to operate that machinery and no desire to learn.  

It is tempting to hope that nine smart and wise men and women contemplate the fate of the nation as they deliberate, but the fate of the nation is our job, not theirs.  Their job is to look for the authority in the Constitution to nationalize health care, and that is their only job. 

What we should hope for is that they heed the words of Patriot (ironically) coach Bill Belichick: “just do your job”.   And if they do, everything will be fine.


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!"

Dog Lovers

Since I posted an opinion yesterday about a story of a family pet being killed over a political difference of opinion, the comments have been fast and furious.  I feel compelled to add an amendment to that post "Farm Animals".

First of all, the story of the dog was posted by a friend of the family, and other friends of the family have confirmed the events as she described them.  I trust the people who I know who have corroborated the account that I commented on, and have no reason to believe the story is fabricated or embellished.  

If anyone knows this story to be a fabrication, please contact me with the specific information (not speculation) that you have - I will publish a complete retraction and a sincere apology. 

Second, anyone with thoughts of retaliation is no friend of mine and misses the whole point of the piece.  The only call to action to be found in that entire post is for the person(s) who did it to identify themselves.  The outrageous behavior has got to stop, not escalate.  Consider this a plea.

This sort of action is deplorable - whether it is done by the right, the left, or independent crazies.  Someone's political opinions are never justification to hurt them and their families or to destroy their property and reputation.   I don't agree with publishing the names of recall signators for this very reason: it invites retaliation and recrimination.  

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and their vote, and no one is entitled to intimidate.  

Tim

 

Work For It

I don't know anyone - liberal, conservative, libertarian, or socialist for that matter - who believes that welfare is better than work.  Do you?  So if everyone agrees welfare is undesirable, why on earth are so many Americans on it?  That question will answer itself at the end of this column. 

The dilemma of government-monopoly welfare for those who are able-bodied is that assisting people in need makes them needier; and dependence teaches dependence to people who need to learn to be independent.  The Greeks knew it, the Romans knew it, the Reformation dudes knew it, Ben Franklin knew it, our grandparents and parents knew it.  Everybody knows it.  And for the record, corporate welfare is equally destructive to the health of a firm, as individual welfare is to the person, but this another post for another day. 

The longer one is removed from work, the less able to work they become.  Their knowledge fades or becomes obsolete, new tools and methods and ideas make their expertise irrelevant, and bad habits become engrained.  The libertarian answer to welfare, like all other social services, is private charity and private insurance, but we should not wait for the scales to be lifted from a world of un-libertarian eyes before we try save another generation from a life sentence of welfare-induced poverty and despair.  Pragmatism is not unprincipled. 

The solution to the welfare dilemma is quite simple - let people work for it.

Notice I did not say "make" people work for it, as conservatives are wont to do; work is not punishment and need is not moral turpitude.  Make welfare voluntary; and let people work in exchange for the assistance they receive, so that they develop the understanding that income is accomplishment measured. Or, alternatively, let them choose not to receive state assistance if that is their preference - we libertarians do not believe in forcing people to do things they do not want to do.

And here's were the fun begins...if we are going to let people to work, we must also permit employers to provide work for them to do, and the way to do this most effectively is to simply remove the requirement that employers pay them.  Splat!  Splat!  Splat!  That sound you hear is liberal heads exploding at the suggestion that "free" labor be supplied to millions of evil, profiteering corporations. 

Breathe into the bag, Jerry, because this going to leave a mark, too: zero is what someone who does not know how to work is worth. Splat!  Splat!  Splat!  Having committed the unpardonable sin of stating truthfully what far too many people are worth in strictly economic terms, I will apologize for the brain-matter splatter and anguish I may have caused my liberal friends.  But note that the first rule of business turnarounds is to stop lying to yourself about what something is worth; and the second rule is to do something to make it actually be worth more.    

Here's how it goes, conceptually.  The state provides vouchers to employers equal to, say, 25 hours of work – any employer can receive as many as they want. Companies "pay" welfare recipients who come to work at their place of business with those vouchers in exchange for 25 hours of weekly work; and that completed voucher is presented to whichever agency of government determines eligibility for welfare benefits – unemployment compensation, general assistance, AFDC, etc. 

Any abuse of the voucher system and the CEO goes to jail – no ifs, no buts, no fines, no underlings taking the rap – for something like 5 years in state prison living orange with the other predators who should not be walking among us free people.  Fraud is one of the worst crimes as it takes advantage of our good nature and makes us afraid of living free.  We don’t just tolerate it, we reward it in this country - and we need to stop.  

The work "matchmaking" is entirely voluntary, so the slave-labor analogies certain to be hurled at me in the comments following his post don't hold water - I’ve warned you before not to send the Junior Varsity.   No one is forcing anyone to do anything, no one is working for nothing, and no one would have to endure a second week at an abusive employer.  Slaves, on the other hand, can’t leave and their labor is confiscated – think taxpayers. 

Working welfarians will learn valuable employment skills and gain pride and confidence by earning their way in this world; anyone who has helped someone learn how to work knows the transformative value of work to a troubled soul.  Companies receive adjunct labor to expand and grow their operations at low cost while developing a pool of potential full time employees with relevant job-ready skills.  The state can discontinue all of its ineffective training programs immediately and reduce overall costs of social services rapidly as people migrate from welfare-work to conventional employment once they get the hang of it.

Eventually, the welfare rolls shrink to such low levels that private charity can manage the load and the state can get out of the welfare business altogether, making libertarians happy, which is the whole purpose of proposing a libertarian solution to welfare.  Win-win-win...win.

Relax, Norma Rae - bringing in unskilled workers at zero-pay does not threaten the wages of skilled workers at a firm; just the opposite, in fact.  The skilled welder can weld more while his/her work-welfare apprentice is sweeping up, running to fetch weld tips and wire, etc.  That higher welding productivity makes the welder worth more, and he/she will get paid more as a result.  How many wins are we up to now? 

And no company is going to run out and replace its paid skilled workers with “free” unskilled workers.  The suggestion of such a thing displays total ignorance of wealth creation, competitive differentiation, the basis of wage employment, capitalism, and capitalists.  Teaching welfare recipients, especially generational ones, how to work will cost companies money; the only possible return on that investment is for their paid workforce to be more productive and boost profits, and you can’t bust that move without a paid (i.e. skilled) workforce.    

Initially, the state will have to be the employer of last resort if private work is insufficient to absorb the welfare population.  No worries there - there is no shortage of litter to pick up, graffiti to remove, rusty crap to paint, snow to shovel at homes of shut-ins, weeds to pull, etc.  If state workers can't figure out how to introduce weed-pullers to weeds, I know several inner-city pastors who would cheerfully step in tomorrow with ready-lists of community chores that need doing while the intractable public servants sulk in their cubes.  Let ‘em pout; we have a world to fix.  

And what about those able-bodied people who refuse to work?  Do we just let them starve?  Yup – starve.  Splat!  What about their kids?  Take their kids away and let couples who will love them save them.  Splat!  Failing to support your kids when you have the opportunity to provide for them is abuse; we should quit calling it anything else and not tolerate, excuse, or subsidize it.  We don’t owe able adults the privilege of living off the work of others (Splat!), but we do owe every kid a chance to be loved.       

Employers give billions to charity and give millions of hours to worthwhile community projects when they get nothing of economic value in return – they will jump all over this one, trust me.  And is it unreasonable to ask people to work for the income we provide them?  Back when we used to be a reasonable nation we used to think not.  Most people on assistance want to work but don’t know how to either do a job or find one.  Providing the opportunity to learn and the chance to impress an employer is a far greater kindness than keeping them alive in perpetual despair living as wards of the state.   

Now there is one small, tiny, itsy-bitsy catch to this proposal – moving large numbers of people from welfare to work will require abolishing several labor laws, exempting firms from lawsuits, voiding union contracts, changing IRS regulations, rescinding hundreds of rules, and dismantling the massive bureaucratic empires whose survival depends on retaining and expanding  the status quo.  In other words, fixing welfare requires the government to get out of the way. 

And if the government has to get out of the way in order to get people off of welfare, it is pretty clear why so many are on welfare in the first place, now, isn’t it?   


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!

Mulligan Nation

I hadn’t planned on devoting so much time blogging about Wisconsin politics, but this state has become a science project too fascinating to ignore. 

We are testing a novel theory here in our beery little test tube, namely that long-banished liberties might be re-established in Mulligan Nation without being vaporized on re-entry as they pass through the moronosphere. 

In case you are just waking from a coma, the duly-elected Wisconsin legislature passed a budget repair bill about a year ago that closed a $3.6 billion deficit without layoffs, service cuts, or tax increases and duly-elected Governor Walker signed it.  In 49 other states that achievement would get you a parade; in Wisconsin, it gets you recalled.  Two state senators were taken out last summer, and the cross-hairs are trained on the Governor now.

The Act 10 reforms curtailed the collective bargaining privilege bestowed upon public sector workers by legislative fiat in the 1950’s.  The reforms empowered local units of government and school boards to make changes that have already saved hundreds of millions in wasteful spending, reduced class sizes, and kept the best teachers teaching.  Naturally, the state teachers’ union opposed smarter spending, reduced class size, and better teaching.  In fact, all of the unions oppose Act 10 and Governor Walker, as it liberates Wisconsin from the death grip they have had on politics here for decades.   

In advance of the reform legislation taking effect, five large school districts with union-packed boards extended their existing union contracts to avoid the provisions of Act 10.  They were lauded for their courage and their oh-so-clever out-maneuvering of that new Governor who had the audacity to do what he said he was going to do after being elected by a majority of the voters, most of whom actually lived in the state, or actually lived, as the case may be.  

Without the ability to use the sensible Act 10 reforms that saved the bacon of hundreds of other districts, these oh-so-clever defenders of their union perks had no choice but to layoff young (and very good) teachers, curtail student services, and increase class sizes.  With only 12% of the state’s student population, these five oh-so-clever districts account for 68% of the layoffs this school year. 

In the not-so-clever 421 other school districts across the state, the sky did not fall when the unions were forced to let go of it; but in those five oh-so-clever districts where the grip was tightened, they have ripped it down around themselves with their own hands.  And they have blamed everyone but themselves for the self-inflicted damage.  

The School Board and teachers’ union in Milwaukee, whose Mayor coincidently lambasted Governor Walker’s reforms while quietly using them to save his city from bankruptcy, discovered that 1+1 really does equal 2 once the bailouts of state money siphoned away from the taxpayers in places like Rice Lake, Cassville, Rio, and Pembine came to an end.   

Faced with dire fiscal consequence one year into their oh-so-clever evasion of Act 10 reforms, the Milwaukee Board and its union asked the state legislature to give them a mulligan, special legislation permitting them to renegotiate their contracts using the tools and provisions of that very same Act they are trying to recall the Governor over.   To their credit, the legislature resisted the revenge instinct and granted them their chance for a do-over. 

No libertarian worth his salt would fail, at this point, to note the insanity of a local school board and its union having to beg permission from the state capital to do what it thinks is best for its kids, teachers, and parents.  That glow you see in the sky is a tiny little bit of liberty (local control) heating up on re-entry as it passes through the Madison moronosphere.

A few days ago, that glow turned white hot when the four other union-first-last-only districts jointly issued a public letter imploring their Milwaukee brothers and sisters not to seek relief - to tough it out and endure the devastation rather than admit Governor Walker was, and is, right this close to the recall elections.

Screw the kids, screw the teachers, screw the parents, screw the taxpayers, there is a recall election coming up and dadgummit we can’t admit Act 10 is working.  They didn’t just imply it; they said so in plain English – recall politics must take priority over educating kids.  Governor Walker called them on it, and issued a letter of his own taking them to task for putting kids last.  It’s about time.    

When people accuse me of union-busting, I take that as a high compliment.  Compulsory unions are a vile affront to liberty, and the teachers unions’ public letter is a rare truthful admission that their only goal is power and money.  It strips away the flimsy façade of noble purpose, an ancient fraud now so laughable it couldn’t fool a Kardashian.   

Wisconsin is Mulligan Nation. 

Just like the city’s Mayor, Milwaukee’s school board and its union want a do-over.  So do the county judges who are trying to overturn the Voter ID law, and so do the local officials who are trying to nullify the Concealed Carry law. So do the 850,000 or so people (not the the million-line lie) who signed recall petitions to nullify the 2010 elections they lost, and so do the activists going after Justice Prosser, resurrecting an absurd asked-an-answered investigation in hopes of nullifying the election he won. 

It should come as no surprise that a population educated in union schools where everyone gets a sticker and a hug and a do-over, where grades are inflated to fabricate a false sense of self-esteem, where students are promoted above their ability, where winning is scorned and failure is acceptable would think that they are entitled to a mulligan whenever things don’t go their way.  Even the 17 Democrats who just voted to kill the mining bill want a special session to reconsider, now that they realize that in doing so they vetoed thousands of high-paying jobs.     

But out here in the real world, in the head-clearing air breathed outside the moronosphere, there are no mulligans.  The mining company that wanted to invest $1.5 billion of its own money and create those thousands of high-paying jobs across the state has pulled its permits and demanded its deposit money back.  They asked; the Democrats answered; they left.  End of story.  

And that really is the end of it – welcome to the world.  No stickers, no hugs, no do-overs, just choices and consequences.  Teachers need to first learn that lesson, and then teach it to their students; that would be a good start towards bringing liberty back to Mulligan Nation and raising up a generation of Americans prepared to self-govern and able to self-sustain.  


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!

Litmus Test

There have been two moments of extreme clarity in my lifetime; watershed events that changed the fundamental assumptions upon which our worldview rests.  

The first date of extreme clarity is September 11, 2001.  No thinking person could possibly look at issues of national security and foreign relations the same way before and after the attacks on our soil.

The second date of extreme clarity is September 15, 2008, the day Lehman Brothers failed.  No thinking person could possibly look at issues of economic and monetary policy the same way before and after the world’s financial system melted down.   

Which is not to say that any specific set of before & after beliefs proves a functioning mind; rather that the litmus test for any opinion in the areas of economics and international affairs is that it recognizes the abrupt alteration of reality visited upon us with such cruel clarity on those two dates. 

It doesn’t matter how one’s thinking changed; what matters is that it did.  Only an empty head, a walking e-prom - could remain unfazed by those two national traumas.  Regurgitating slogans memorized in one’s formative years is not thinking, liberal protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.  Parrots repeat words, too.    

Any brain worth bathing in nutrients had to be recalibrated when the veil was lifted and we realized that the American invincibility – both military and financial – we had taken for granted for decades was not inevitable. In my case, a reliably conservative/libertarian bearing was redirected to a new heading – hard libertarian.

The common thread between my two personal epiphanies is the rejection of supply-side liberty; the notion that we can push ideas and beliefs onto others who do not want to embrace them.  Liberty’s supply-siders view it in purely political terms, something that can be legislated into existence.  They have so polluted its meaning with compromise and perversion of purpose that it has become just another commodity packaged and sold by marketers, pundits, and consultants.

Whether it was the pushing of partisan notions of democracy and capitalism onto an unwilling world in the first instance, or the pushing of bi-partisan notions of a managed crony-corporatist debt economy at home in the second, those two late-summer moments of extreme clarity were the end of “push” for me.  A century of legislated progressivism had ended badly – as a courageous few predicted, a dedicated minority feared, and an apathetic majority noticed too late.    

Liberty is the absence of government – it is a void, a treasured emptiness.  You cannot push air into a vacuum, it must fill itself.  Liberty is like that; it is all pull, and each of us decides for ourselves how we will fill up our own vessel.  Freedom brings diversity and spontaneous order, the essential elements of a healthy society where people live honestly together. 

My generalized distrust of government as an instrument of positive change shifted radically on 9/11 and its aftermath to a conviction that government, in its current form and scope, is in fact the agent of ruin, the prime mover of our demise.  Limiting government turned from an abstract philosophical catch-phrase to a moral imperative.

In its attempt to impose order, government suffocates diversity and innovation, and its only answer to each of its mistakes is to make them again, only bigger and faster.  Once considered the exclusive domain of wing-nuts and paranoids, an openly hostile attitude towards government became fashionable again in the wake of 9/11 and 9/15.  That’s a good thing; the operating principle that we shouldn’t trust Obama any farther than we can throw Bush is the proper modern-day application of the Founder’s Intent.

And government incompetence, too-long tolerated with an eye-roll and smiling head-shake as the necessary overhead cost for living under the rule of law, is now seen clearly as a direct threat to our survival as a free people.  The financial meltdown in the fall of 2008 simply broadened the recognition of government’s capacity for destruction via incompetence into the financial realm. 

Each crisis spawned its own poster kid that embodies exactly what is wrong with government – TSA and Dodd-Frank, respectively.  Totally ineffective, ridiculously expensive, and brazenly stupid, each of those two monstrosities punishes the innocent while failing to deter the guilty.  It is government’s signature move – responding late to a problem of its own making with something even more problematic designed to fool the foolish into believing that nothing is something if too many blue shirts stand around doing it.      

Last week, without fanfare, this century’s third moment of extreme clarity arrived, when CBO admitted that the cost of President Obama’s national health care plan was understated by half when it was sold to the American people in 2009.  Half.

The President promised us that if we let him Chavez the world’s greatest medical care, he would bend the “cost curve”.  His plan would reduce the deficit, remember?  And lower our premiums, remember?  And our plans could all stay the same, remember?  He told us he wouldn’t sign a bill unless it came in under a trillion dollars and covered everyone, remember? 

So for a purported $900 billion, he got his signature legislation and we surrendered medical liberty.  

Those of us who scoffed at his number were called racists and misogynists, among other things.  Those of us who warned that political agendas would dictate coverage and that employers would drop insurance were ridiculed.  One caring liberal said she was praying for my grandchildren to come into the world with birth defects and for my wife to contract cancer, so grave was my offense in questioning the Great O.   

We haven’t even started the exchanges yet, and already President Obama’s $900 billion not-to-exceed has turned into $1.7 trillion and leaves 2 million uncovered, private insurance premiums have skyrocketed, 30% of employers plan to drop insurance, one thousand waivers have been granted to Democrat donors, contraception is an entitlement, and abortion is back front and center, Stupak amendment be damned.  I’m not going to say “I told you so”; but it's not because I’m not that kind of guy - I am that kind of guy. 

No, I’m going to wait until they fess up to the $3 trillion it is really going to cost, and admit that 40 million workers will be forced off employer coverage, and deem facelifts medically necessary.  That’s when I am going to say “I told you so”.  And fear not, liberals - I have nothing but love in my heart for you; I hope your grandchildren are all born healthy and that you live long and happy lives with your spouses.  No, really – I do. 

In the meantime, I am just going to ask you a new litmus test question: what do you think of President Obama’s Health Care Reform?  Any opinion worth listening to will start with the acknowledgement that we got played – big time.     

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!

More Fun Facts

There are all kinds of jobs – blue collar, white collar, private sector, public sector, full-time, part-time, and snow, just to name a few. 

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s political opponents are feasting on media reports that the state lost jobs during 2011, his first year in office.  Apparently, the “Obama rule” – a four-year blame exemption – does not give Walker until 2014 to be responsible the economic statistics on his watch, but different standards are nothing new in politics.    

First of all, interpreting employment data is always an adventure; as in speed-dating, you can always find something to fall in love with in 5 minutes if the pool of alternatives is very large and you are very desperate.  Personally, I would not have tried to make a headline out of numbers shifting around beneath the margin of error, but if others wish to tease hurricane winds out of a sill draft, I am happy to fly my kite with them for a while.    

Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development website calls its WorkNet database “Wisconsin's premier labor market information delivery system”.  This is not Walker-spin, the site was deployed under former Governor Jim Doyle and was last modified in 2009, two years before the Walker era began.  

Jim Doyle’s premier source for labor information directs researchers to the Current Employment Survey (CES), the month-to-month “bible” of employment data in the United States.  According to CES there were 42,600 more jobs in Wisconsin in December of 2011 than in January of 2011.  Sorry - don’t throw your mocha mocha fair trade skinny latte latte grande in a recycled cup at me, go look it up yourself:

http://worknet.wisconsin.gov/worknet/daces.aspx?menuselection=da

Nothing up my sleeve; just select “Wisconsin” and select “2011” and subtract December from January and see if you can find the havoc that Walker has wreaked.  Where I come from, when you end the year with more than you started with, it is called an increase.  If more is actually less, then why am I eating insufficient portions of crap I don’t even like and counting points I don't understand?      

The CES data (not me) says that 39,400 jobs were added in the private sector, and another 3,200 were added in the public sector.  Employment increased in 30 of the 36 occupational categories listed, including a (wait for it…wait for it…) 6.2% increase in the number of state workers. 

Live by the sword, die by the sword, own the sword - if you are going to sell your ideology with BLS data, then small ulcerations like this are going to happen to you.  And don’t get all smarmy about CES “benchmarking”, unless you expect us to believe that 15,500 state jobs were actually cut by Walker in 2011 but somehow the AFSCME drum line missed it until BLS benchmarked in January.  Seems like a lot of empty cubes not to notice, doesn’t it?   

“But, but, but but…look over here!  Wisconsin lost jobs in manufacturing in the second half of the year,” my Recallista buddies will point out with leg-tingling glee.  And they will be absolutely right.  In fact, Wisconsin is near the top of the states with second half declines, sandwiched right there in between California and New York, those other two Koch-sniffing Scootervilles with Governors who waterboard aging kindergarten teachers for sport.

And if that doesn’t take the starch out of your skivvies, ponder this:  five of the six states with the highest rates of manufacturing job growth - South Carolina, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Texas – have combative conservative Republican governors whose economic policies are as “extreme” as Governor Walkers’ if not more.  The sixth, Washington State, cut government jobs by 2.5% last year.  Will that be Kathleen Falk’s jobs program - cut government jobs like Washington and enact Right To Work like Indiana?   That would sure put Walker in his place.      

The point is that politicians like to take credit and love to place blame for employment changes, but in reality they have little to do with it in the short run. 

As an employer, I can assure you that not one single job in the private sector is created to reward or punish any politician or political party.  We hire as many people as it takes to design, sell, and build our products and/or service our customers – not one more, not one less. 

Regardless of our political views, we all want to grow, to add jobs, to build up our businesses and to support the communities in which we live and work.  As much as Democrats and Republicans would like to make employment statistics all about Act 10, employment mostly responds to Act None – the law of supply and demand.   

Which is not to say that a state’s business climate is unimportant; to add to our employment in any given state we employers must decide both that a) another position is needed and b) it should be located there.  The fiscal, tax, regulatory, labor, education, and infrastructure policies that collectively make up the business climate have an impact on decisions of where to site factories, offices, warehouses, sales people, and stores. 

Perhaps the most important economic statistic to be released in recent weeks – but also to be taken with the same grain of statistical salt – is the high number of new business formed in Wisconsin so far in 2012, up 16.9% from the prior year.  New employers are where future job growth will come; the aforementioned state of Washington led the nation in new business formation in 2008-09 and has become a top job producer a few years later.   Like the song says - from small things mama, big things one day come.  

If you recall, in 2006 – long before the financial crisis and even longer before Scott Walker - Wisconsin ranked 50th in the nation in new business formation.  Dead last.  By all accounts, Walker’s reforms have both objectively and subjectively improved the business climate here in the state; employer surveys show the greatest one year favorable reversal of trend ever recorded - over 90% now approve of the direction the state is headed. 

Now, it could be that we employers don’t have any idea what is good for employment – anything is theoretically possible.  It is also possible that if BLS “benchmarked” that employer survey they could make it come out the other way, too.  And perhaps those who demand Walker’s recall have an even better plan – a set of economic and fiscal policies that will encourage more businesses to come here, to stay here, to invest here, and to grow here.  That is possible, too.   

If they do, it would help their case immensely if they would tell the rest of us what it is, instead of pouncing on statistical variations in employment surveys when the swing goes their way.  “Walker Bad” is not a plan; and any-plan is going to beat no-plan when the GAB finally calls the recall election and everybody takes their lumps. 


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”     
   

Church And State

A few hundred years into the Christian era, the merger of the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church blurred the lines between church and state; it corrupted both, injured one and killed the other.  Thomas Jefferson didn’t have to be genius to figure this one out; he just needed to be moderately well-read.       

The consequence of secularizing the Church while sanctifying the State back in those three-digit years plunged the world into a millennium of misery, ignorance, and oppression – the Dark Ages.  I often wonder how far advanced our medical technologies would be today if we had not hit the pause button on science for a thousand years.  The medical miracles of 3012 would have been with us today – just think about that for a moment.  How sad.    

The Church/state monopoly on authority was broken in 1517 when Martin Luther’s theological differences with the Roman Catholic Church caused him to leave it.  He did not lobby the State to force the Church to conform to his beliefs, he simply confessed his own faith and left it to individual conscience and belief to follow him or not.  Was Luther the first libertarian?  Perhaps – his notion of Free Will is indistinguishable from our idea of Volition, save for Divine authorship. 

Luther’s protest in Wittenberg ignited the Protestant Reformation, which introduced choice and competition to the practice of faith, revolutionized Western thought, and lifted the world out of the Dark Ages.  As it turns out, choice and competition even makes religion better, although my Roman Catholic friends may not agree with me on that.  

The Protestants gave us our modern understandings of free will, work ethic, commerce, equal individual rights, and self-evident truths.  They also gave us universal literacy, accessible books, the industrial revolution, democracy, private property, private charity, the abolitionist movement, and this great nation we all love. 

And this great nation’s first important contribution to the development of civilization was the separation of church and state, the thing that allowed all other freedoms to flourish.  Freedom of religion - specifically freedom from government regulation of religion - is the very reason our nation exists.  The Pilgrims did not come here for the benefits; they came to free their religion from their state.   

The wisdom of separating church and state seems obvious - government is a collective enterprise, while salvation is a personal relationship.  The need for both church and state seems obvious too; one without the other has proven to be extremely hazardous to humans. 

In the last century, the communists thought religion to be the “opiate of the masses” and banned religious practice outright when they seized power.  Wherever it was practiced, atheistic communism imposed localized Dark Ages upon its own people before it started killing them by the millions. 

At the other extreme, theocracies like the Iranian clerics and the Taliban banned secular government when they seized power, and the oppression they delivered in the name of God was every bit as harsh as that meted out by the communists who denied His existence.

Humans thrive when secular authority and spiritual authority both exist but are separated from each other; render under Caesar and all that.  The President’s decision to regulate the Catholic Church, no matter what other words he uses to disguise his intent, ignores the lessons of history and imperils our liberties unnecessarily.  The dispute over contraceptive “rights” is a contrivance intended to divert attention from the Constitutional challenge he has (again) laid down.    

Libertarians are purists who believe in complete freedom of choice and complete responsibility for the consequences of those choices.  Conservatives balk at the former and liberals gasp at the latter; that’s how you can tell us all apart.  We are also purists when it comes to Constitutional constraints and the separation of powers that keeps us free.   

We don’t apologize for those “extreme” positions.  The big lie of the progressive century is that group entitlements and group consequences have made us a better people than we were when we were individually free and personally responsible – i.e. when the libertarian dinosaurs still roamed the nation in large herds.  

We are not better; we are less giving, we are more violent, we are less tolerant, we are less educated, and are weaker of mind and lower of character.  We have denied spiritual truth and then demanded government fill the void we created for ourselves.  Our attempts to sanctify the state have only proven that righteousness cannot be legislated and that government is an inadequate substitute for virtue.    

It is consequence - not law - that moderates the human appetite for self-destructive excess. Socializing consequence invites destructive choices, whether personal, economic, moral, or political.  If I could force you to share my bar tabs, I would probably still be drinking; if I could force you to share my hangovers, I know I would.     

I’m not a Catholic, so it is not my place to tell Catholics what to believe, how to practice their faith, or how to run their charitable institutions.  That is the difference between libertarians and liberals – we lack that gene that incites random acts of tyranny passed off as humanitarian do-goodery by people who coo and purr and admire themselves for telling someone else what to do. 

But I am a citizen, so it is my place to tell my elected representatives to back off.  Government has no authority to regulate church teachings or practice; it is the only duty of government to uphold the Constitution and defend our individual rights.  Fix a bridge and go lay by your dish…and leave those Catholics alone. 

There are over 600 identified religions, denominations, and sects in this country; the U.S. Government is not one of them.  If the Catholics want President Obama to be their Pope and tell them how to run their schools and hospitals, they know where to find him.  And he should be available to report for work in less than a year. 

But in those few months that he has left, the President should stick to running the government and let the Pope run his Church.  And leave the rest of us out of it.      



“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”     

And Now We Know

There will be no mining in Wisconsin.  Every Democrat in the Wisconsin State Senate, including the one who calls himself a Republican, just voted against the Mining Bill and the thousands of jobs it would have created in some of the most impoverished communities in our state.  They killed it.  

For the past year we have had to endure an endless barrage of gas-bagging from the socialists in Madison, but when it came time to quit talking about the working man and actually do something to help him, Democrats closed ranks and voted against jobs, job creators, and the people who work.

There is an old saying that when elephants fight, the grass dies.  It is not always so easy to know which side to be on when the two parties start screaming at each other. Ever since the 2010 elections, both parties have accused the other of waging war on the middle class, war on the working class, and war on work.  We independents had to guess at which side was telling the truth, or perhaps I should say which was the less untruthful.    

And now we know.   

That is the importance of the vote on the mining bill today.  Oh, yes, and Governor Scott Walker was just declared the winner in his upcoming recall election.  He already had a double digit lead in the polls and a growing coalition in his favor – everyone who voted for him the first time plus everyone whose taxes went down with his budget reforms, everyone who got a carry permit, everyone who likes school choice, everyone disgusted with the antics of his opponents, everyone who opposes the idea of election do-overs on principle, and everyone who opposes rampant election fraud. 

Now he can add all those reliably Democrat and underemployed voters in the northern counties who just got shafted, along with all those private sector union members who just got kicked in the groin by the same Democrat state Senators whose Illinois hotel bills they picked up year ago.  When you reach reflexively for that Kathleen Falk lever in a few weeks, comrades, just remember who it was that played you for a sucker.   

In an irony of pure coincidence, the Wisconsin Mining Bill was killed on the very same day that our company was invited to come to Latin America to discuss new mining projects in Chile and Argentina.  Among other things, we make mining equipment in our Wisconsin and Michigan factories and half of it is now exported to other countries.  Good for us that our state’s mining equipment companies are still kicking; sad for us that our miners and mining towns aren’t.   

And in another irony that is not at all coincidental, we received a bulletin today from the National Mining Association (NMA) alerting its members that the Obama administration has proposed new changes to the Surface Mining And Control Act that would effectively ban mining of up to 40% of coal reserves, cost 270,000 jobs and cut federal and state tax revenues by up to $5 billion per year.  Most of the jobs lost will be in impoverished rural Appalachia. 

Democrats just don’t like miners.  Mining towns in rural areas are where the bitter gun and bible clingers the President backhanded in 2008 lived; and those were Democrats he was talking about at that fundraiser in San Francisco.  Like his counterparts in Madison, the President does not seem to care about the actual working men and women who make up the working class they claim to represent.  

Business is hard enough without government making it harder.  The competition is fierce, customers are fickle, employees’ expectations rise constantly, new technologies threaten, credit is the tightest when you need it the most, the economy is unpredictable, and markets turn without warning.  There is no guarantee that any business, no matter how well established, how well run, or how profitable, will survive from one year to the next.

Our country is not creating new businesses at anywhere near the rates that made us the envy of the world for two centuries.  We have ceased to be the most desirable place to do business in the world, and we can thank our government for that.  Wisconsin has one of the worst rates of new business formation in the country. Why is that?  Just try and start up a mine here…

…and then you will know.  

 

Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”     

I Have A Dream

Remember these from school?  “Ask not what your country can do for you; demand it.”  “The only thing to fear is buying our own stuff.”  “Give me liberty or give me free stuff.”  “One if by land, two if by sea; get off that horse and buy my stuff for me.”

And who can forget, “I have a dream…where you have to give me stuff.”

What in the world has happened to us?  How did we go from Patrick Henry and Dr. Martin Luther King to some 30 year-old still-a-student from Georgetown going on national TV to demand more government because she can’t figure out how to keep from getting knocked up on her own dime? 

President Obama – our President Obama - called to congratulate her for that and tell her she represents all women.  Really?  All women?  How about it, ladies – are all of you spending your days getting drilled by losers who can’t afford their own condoms and then bragging about it under oath on CSPAN?  Has your liberation from men left you that completely helpless? 

I don’t think she represents very many women at all; most that I know are proud of their independence and character.  Sometimes politicians say things so incredibly stupid we wonder how they managed to ever get elected...and then other times they sleep.

But you know what?  This whole free contraception thing is the straw that broke the camel’s back.  I am tired of pushing the rock up the hill – I’m throwing in with the gimmee-gimmee crowd.  Kennedy didn’t know squat, Henry was a flake, Jefferson had it all wrong, and Dr. King must have been some selfish, racist, libertarian with that stupid dream that every individual should be judged by the content of their character.  Screw that.

I have a better dream.  I have a dream that you buy your stuff for you and then you buy my stuff for me.  That’s equality, right there.  Whatever I want and just because I want it.  Food, housing, day care, abortions, contraception, train rides, a job, pension, health care, a Volt, college, flat-out cash.  The way it works is you give me the stuff I need so I can use my own money to buy the stuff I want – Spring Break in Cancun, iTunes, tattoos.  You even have to buy my Ambien so I can dream my dream.  

I have another dream where you taxpaying welders have to pay for my college as long as I want to keep going, and then I will whine and bitch about my student loans for years until you write them off. And then I will whine and bitch some more because you won’t hire me with my useless degree and pathetic attitude.  If that doesn’t work, I’ll sue you.  Or boycott, or occupy, or break your glass or light your stuff on fire. 

I don’t need a reason.  You owe me, because I breathe.  I have a dream…

In my new dream you have to hire me and then you can’t fire me, and I get sick days and vacation days and holidays and union conferences off, and call-in days, and I can watch porn on school computers and if you fire me for that I get reinstated with back pay.  I have a dream…where I can retire early, draw a pension and then get paid again to go back to work at the same job. 

How about this one:  “We hold this truth to be self-evident - I get my way.” 

If my guy doesn’t win an election we get to recall the guy who did, and you have to pay for it.  I decide my pay and benefits and you pay.  I get to tell you what to do and you do it.  In my dream I can stop you from mining on your own land, from owning your own guns, selling your own milk, and growing your own food.   We’re all in this together – I say and you do. 

I have a dream that I decide how much profit you can make and how much of your own money you get to keep.  I have a dream where you have to join my union and dues get taken out your check before the IRS even gets their bite of the apple. I have a dream where you don’t have squat to say about it.  Shut up, bitch – this is what democracy looks like.  That’s how I sound in my dream - street.   

I have a dream where it is a disability to be me, so now I get to park up front and get even more free stuff than if I was a just a regular broke-dick. I want that ID card where you have to give me medical marijuana and King Crimson CD’s.  I have a dream…  [Alarm goes off and I wake all sweaty and heart-pounding] 

Wow, that was some nightmare; too bad we are living in it.   Do you know the difference between shame and Beetlejuice?  If you say Beetlejuice three times, he shows up.  The Wisconsin lefty protestors have proven you can chant “shame shame shame” until the cows come home or flee to Illinois and it won’t instill any in you. 

This Georgetown woman did her own shameful three-way; turns out she is not 23, is not a real student, and is a serial testifier – a 30 year-old “activist” fabricated for the cameras by the marketing department over at Democrat Victimhood, Inc.  Wham, bam, thanks for the sound bite, ma’am.  The party of women creates a new national Lewinsky to humiliate, and the shameless left cheers her on. Cheeky.  

The worst thing about his whole incident is that we now know what kind of dipstick gets into law school these days; we can look forward to decades of her suing us because her watch stopped, or the Fox station airs Seinfeld re-runs when she likes to tan, or brunettes earn more than blondes, or guys don’t need tampons, or they play hockey in the South.  Who knows what craving for attention will trigger another seizure?     

At age 40 she will be up on the Hill testifying about why we need to buy her a tummy tuck and liposuction, and at age 50, it will be breast augmentation and collagen implants.  At 60 we will start medicating her libido back into action and 70 she will be hounding us to buy the hubby’s dinger pills and call dermabrasion health care and make us pay for it.  By then she will have some money and have turned Republican.  It won’t matter; they both want free stuff. 

At a panel on nationalizing health care in 2009, I warned the greatest danger of a government-run system was the politicization of illness, disease, and treatment. Equating avoidance of a voluntary condition (pregnancy) with prevention of a disease in order to mandate contraceptive coverage without compensation is just the tip of the iceberg of what we can expect each election year when the pols are trolling for votes in the highly-contested moron community.    

When your health care costs go up and your employer drops your coverage, you can’t say that you weren’t warned.  While this young lady was reading her lines over at Nancy Pelosi’s Theatre of the Absurd, the real news was being made by HHS Secretary Sebelius, who gloated that the insurance industry was in a “death spiral” and promising us straight-faced that mandating coverage without compensation had nothing to do with it. 

No doubt the frisky coeds over at Georgetown Law School believed every word of it.  

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”